Retrace
by bravevulnerability
Summary: "We'd still be together if none of this ever happened. Do you ever think about that?" Post-ep for episodes 1x01, 'Comeback', and 1x02, 'Reset'.


**A/N: After having the chance to watch the first two episodes of Absentia, I'm already so intrigued by these characters and their dynamic that writing about them was quickly inevitable.**

 **And a special thank you to Élo, for the encouragement and enthusiasm.**

* * *

 _"We'd still be together if none of this ever happened. Do you ever think about that?_

 _"I do."_

* * *

He thinks about it a lot. Has thought about it a lot over the past six years. He never stopped. Even on nights with Alice... he never stopped. He couldn't.

He can't now.

He tries to avoid conversation with his wife for the most part, knowing what it will always circle back to. Her insecurities are blooming like wildflowers, twining between them like thorns. He doesn't blame her, doesn't try to cut them down. He can't do that either.

"Do you still love her?"

It comes up every time they're alone now. He can never give her a direct answer. He doesn't know what the answer is, if there is one at all.

Alice is sweet and kind, the light amidst his years of darkness, the woman who became a mother to his child, their savior. Alice is _good_.

But Emily is...

Better?

No, no, it's not necessarily about being better. She's just - different. He fell in love with Alice's quiet affection, her soft spoken voice, her gentle heart. But Emily... she struck him like lightning the moment he met her, drew him in with her tenacity, her passion, her fire. Emily is like fire on a cold night, like electricity during a power outage, oxygen after drowning. And she already has him walking straight into the flames again.

He knows the saying, how rare but possible it is for lightning to strike twice. His first wife just hit him with that second bolt.

Finding her, finding her _alive_ , felt like breathing in a crisp breath of fresh air for the first time in six years. Alice has been his beautiful respirator. But maybe it's time to breathe on his own again.

Nick scrapes a hand through his hair, squeezes his eyes shut.

"I'll always care about her," is the attempt at an explanation he usually goes with.

It's not enough.

"Are you still in love with her?"

Nick stays silent. Alice walks out.

He sleeps on the couch with Riggs.

* * *

It's been two weeks since they found her, since she was dragged from a tank of torture and woke in a hospital room. She still can't manage a shower.

She barely sleeps, crawls from the couch every morning to the bathroom in Jack's apartment, and runs the water. She's in control, she reminds herself. Whatever happened to her in the cabin, whatever methods she can't remember her captor using, they can't be applied here.

She's alone in the bathroom with the water, no one can harm her.

She runs the water, her lungs cave in.

Emily buries her face in her hands, her hands in the oily locks of her hair. She tries not to sob, doesn't want Jack to see her like that, to crucify her with anymore assessing looks. But the panic in her chest is like a tidal wave that washes over her every single day, a recurring tsunami that she's so tired of trying to survive.

She purses her lips, forcing the oxygen she sucks in to rush through her nose, out her mouth. It's okay, she's okay.

She's broken and battered from the outside in, she feels unwanted by everyone from her old life who's supposed to love her, but she survived six years in captivity, six years that left her covered in mental and physical scars. It can't all be for nothing.

Emily relents and takes a washcloth, sits on the edge of the bathtub, and dips the small towel in the water like always. A simple shower would be so much quicker, easier, but the scrub of the cloth over her skin, limb by limb, is all she can handle right now.

 _Baby steps_ , she tells herself.

Her heart clenches. The last time she saw him, Flynn was mastering his baby steps.

She washes her hair in the sink, tries not to look in the mirror when she's done. She doesn't want to see the bruises marring her skin, the abrasions etched into her flesh.

Jack studies her each time she comes out after nearly an hour, the judgement in his eyes. Somewhere inside, she knows he loves her, but it's buried beneath the strange resentment she's felt from the moment she saw him again in her hospital room. He's letting her stay in his apartment because she's his sister, but he doesn't want her here. He only tolerates her the way her son does, the way Nick's new wife does.

Part of her wonders if life would have been better for them all if she never came back. Part of her wishes Nick would have found her too late.

* * *

She's not sleeping, he can tell. When they worked together in the FBI, she would pull all nighters, so dedicated to her cases, the victims, catching killers, that she would wear herself so thin he thought she might break. He would have to physically remove her from the office sometimes, coax her back home with him.

But he remembers the dark smudges of purple that would stain the delicate skin beneath her eyes, the emptiness that would drain the color from her irises. He remembers how fragile she looked then. That was nothing compared to now.

She looks worse than fragile, she looks like she's already been broken into a million pieces.

"I can't," she whispers when he tells her she needs to rest. They're standing in an empty hallway at headquarters, her hair falling in violent waves around her face, the sunken in hollows of her cheek. Not sleeping or eating enough. "Don't worry about me, Nick. It's-"

"PTSD?"

She purses her lips. "Yeah."

He touches her cheek, strokes his thumb to that harsh slash of bone. It's been six years, he's remarried, renovated his entire life in his best attempt to paste plaster over the broken parts of himself that never stopped yearning for her. But the moment he pulled her body from that tank, his glass house of believing she was dead shattered, and now… every time he's beside her, it's almost as if those six years never happened to his heart.

It may be in pieces, but it still yearns for her.

"We'll get through it."

"There is no _we_ ," she snaps, pushing his hand away from her face. "Not anymore."

"Emily." He reaches for her again, but she dodges the hand he tries to brush to her arm this time.

She grits her teeth, glares at him with so much pain in her eyes. She's been through hell in these last six years, whether she remembers it or not, but she looks as if the last two weeks are hurting her just as badly, ripping open scars that haven't even had the chance to heal.

"I don't need you."

 _You're the one who was fucking somebody else._

"I want you to be okay." She steps away from him, buries her hands in her pockets. He sighs. "Just - let me know if there's anything I can do."

She shakes her head. "Just keep being a good dad to our son. Don't worry about me," she repeats and then she walks away from him.

* * *

Days later, she starts to call him in the middle of the night. The nightmares are too much, the trauma too severe, and he can't just leave her alone in it. Even if he wanted to.

He begins to purposely stay awake so he'll catch the phone before it can buzz on the nightstand. So it won't wake Alice. He slips out of the bed when it does. It isn't much of a challenge anymore, his wife typically sleeps with a wall of space between them now.

"Em," he answers the call in a whisper. She's gasping, choking on tears, his name. "You're okay. I'm coming." He jogs through down the stairs, through the front door. "I'm already on the way."

"No," she rasps. "Don't come. Don't, just - stay with your wife."

She says it every time. He never listens.

She's staying in a hotel now. He knows she never had the best relationship with Jack, knew she wouldn't last long at her brother's apartment. He takes the roads to her on autopilot, pushing the speed limit, and pulling into the parking spot outside of her room within fifteen minutes.

He already has a key, stole it from her last time.

"Emily?" he calls as he steps inside. The lamp in the room is on, but she's not on the bed, the tiny couch, or small kitchen area. The bathroom door is cracked.

She's curled up in the corner, tears staining her cheeks, eyes wet and glaring at the showerhead.

"Why do you keep showing up?" she questions without looking at him. Her voice is ragged, rough like sandpaper scraping at his insides.

Nick swallows, steps past the bathroom's threshold to stand in front of her. He holds out his hand, waits her out. She sighs, accepts his insistent fingers. He pulls her up, keeps her hand in his grasp.

"You know why."

"I'm not your responsibility," she growls, shaking his fingers from hers. He tightens his grip. Her teeth grind, hard enough to cause her jaw to square sharp enough to slice. "You moved on."

"Does it look like I've moved on?" It's the most honest thing he's said in weeks. "I thought you were dead. I couldn't cope with it anymore, so yeah, I tried. I wanted to do what was best for Flynn."

"By replacing me?" Her bottom lip trembles. "Trying to - to erase me?

He chokes on her name. "Emily-"

"I was _abducted_ and you - you gave up on me. You married some pretty blonde and taught _our son_ to call her _mom_ ," she gets out, her voice cracking over every other word. "I don't even know what I'm doing here. I shouldn't have come back, I shouldn't have lived through-"

"Stop it," he growls, his ribs collapsing within his chest, deconstructing his lungs, devastating his heart. Leaving it all in rubble and ruins. She's ruining him.

Her hands are shaking at her sides, her breaths trembling past her lips. Nick reaches for her, catching her by the sleeve of her shirt. Her chest shudders with a sob and he drags her forward, hugs her tight enough to hold them both together.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, brushing his fingers through her hair and cupping her skull in his palm. She exhales against his shoulder, presses her cheek hard to his clavicle.

"He's... you think he's better off without me?" she rasps, fisting her fingers in the back of his coat.

"No," he answers, a flare of conviction burning through his chest. He squeezes her harder, feels her bones give within his arms, but she only burrows deeper into his embrace. "Flynn deserves to know you, it just - it hurt. Remembering you hurt."

Her body tenses in his arms and she drops her forehead to his shoulder. He thinks he just added to her wounds.

Emily nods, unfurls her fingers from his coat and presses them to her chest as she eases out of his arms.

"Whoever had me," she murmurs, drifting across the room and descending to sit on the edge of the bed. He can see the dark splotch of a bruise blooming from beneath the back of her shirt as she moves to slide beneath the sheets. "I wish they would have killed me."

He's never heard her so defeated.

Nick strides after her, hesitates for only a moment before climbing into the bed with her. "I don't."

"I don't want to hurt you," she whispers, closing her eyes. "Just go home, Nick."

"It - hurts more to be away from you now."

Her eyes flutter, open up to stare at him. It's so easy to pretend that they're back home, that she's simply lying in bed waiting for him to join her, that Flynn's still just a toddler in the next room. It aches, how badly he wants to go back. It claws him to shreds with guilt.

He loves Alice, but he never fell out of love with his first wife.

Emily lifts a fleeting hand to graze her fingers to his cheek. He leans in and her eyes fall to his mouth, her fingers finding their way there first.

Her fingertips caress his lips like a kiss, trickle down to his chin, his throat. They hook in his shirt, hang there for a long moment.

Her gaze flickers back to his, dark brown with dull traces of gold. They used to shine amber for him.

He combs the hair back from her forehead, skims his thumb to the pink slash of the scar attempting to heal there. Her hand slips to his chest, pauses to rest over his heart. Her palm seals to his sternum as he bows forward, lips making soft contact with the tip of her nose. Emily sucks in a breath, but shifts onto her side before he can kiss her.

He drops his forehead to her temple, lingers there before drawing back to allow her the space to settle.

She curls in the bed with her back to him, so he takes off his shoes and slides in behind her. She doesn't deny the tangle of his arms around her, the snug fit of his chest to her spine, his nose at her neck.

"Do you still love me?"

It's a whisper so soft, he barely hears it. Alice asked him the same question days ago. His answer was silence.

Nick presses his lips to her hair, the bruise on her shoulder.

He holds her through the terrors that haunt her in the dark and stays until the light of morning spills through the blinds.

It's answer enough.


End file.
